"Advanced" Music Theory

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"Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Random111223 » 28 Feb 2013 10:54

Soo i've known the very basics of music theory for a long time now. I can form chords. I can write simple chord progressions. Im familiar with scales.

What kind of theory should i be reading to get better at writing? Something which would help me create melodies and stuff without randomly throwing notes and hoping it sounds good? Can anyone point me to a website where i can learn this?

Something which would give me a sense how different notes relate to eachother in a context,
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby v.lossity » 28 Feb 2013 11:05

I would look into a couple things.

a. how chords fit into particular keys
b. more complex chords like major 7 chords, add 9, etc etc and what their function is
c. look at what different chord changes can do according to traditional composition techniques (for example moving from the dominant chord to the tonic at the end of a phrase creates resolution)
d. look at chord alterations that are non-diatonic, that is, they dont fall into the key you are working in, but they can still sound pleasing to the ear.

and you can always ask people around here. I personally love music theory. Hope this helps :)
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Lavender_Harmony » 28 Feb 2013 12:32

Honestly? Get a book on music theory. The majority of them are structured in a way that you progress on through learning without being overloaded with new information. For example if you jump from notes to chords, you completely skip intervals which is key to making use of chords, and then going from chords to countermelodies completely skips writing melodies, harmonies, keys and a whole bunch of other stuff.

You can download this for free: http://i-e-i.wikispaces.com/file/view/M ... sician.pdf Yes it's a published book, but I was on the author's site a while ago, and he was giving the PDF version away for free. I've had a flick through it has all the basics, it's a little bit outdated but sufficient.
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby itroitnyah » 28 Feb 2013 15:00

Aw yeah, thanks Lav. Definitely going to read that sooner or later
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Nine Volt » 28 Feb 2013 15:20

Intervals, complex chords (7th, 9th are good to start with), harmonies, learning (or memorizing) how to find out the notes in major and minor scales, different modes, melody theory. That sort of thing.

Varien has a nice tutorial series on things like that, as well as basic chords and whatnot. His melody theory video helped me the most, but all of them are helpful (presumably; I didn't watch ones like the intervals one because I already knew about them).
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby colortwelve » 28 Feb 2013 18:17

I'm currently looking into jazz theory along with more advanced melodic concepts like how to use non-chord tones in a melody, harmonizing, counterpoint, etc. Those two pretty much cover the higher levels of theory in their respective areas (jazz is pretty much the logical conclusion of weird chords).
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Random111223 » 28 Feb 2013 20:30

Thank you for the help. Im familiar with most of the suggestions tho. I started reading the book Lav mentioned; some useful stuff there. Learning about dominant chords and subdominant chords in a scale atm which has been unknown for me until now.

Still, i'd appreciate any suggestions where i can learn more advanced stuff.. I have the concepts down but some of the terms are unknown to me which makes this a bit tricky.
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby v.lossity » 28 Feb 2013 23:11

Something that also helped me a lot was looking into chord progression and melody resolution.
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Raddons » 01 Mar 2013 21:30

I like to say mean things while not providing anything productive to the thread.

Your post was off topic and served nothing other than insulting the people who are actually participating in the thread. Don't do it again.
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Stu Beef » 01 Mar 2013 21:37

^actually, kinda @clouds first post. Learning about wacky techniques is fun and all if you're into that kind of stuff, but you can go far with the basics and a good ear. I'll take a bangin tune over some dudes dissertation of it just about any day.

e. I've never heard of melody theory either, and I'm not sure what Kyoga means by diatonic theory.
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby Nine Volt » 01 Mar 2013 21:41

Melody theory is just the name I gave to the theory behind constructing good melodies (so you don't have to plop random notes down and hope it sounds good). It's probably not the technical name for it. It includes stuff like call and response and it's the reason so many classical melodies are so recognizable (Ode to Joy for example; you can recognize that shit any time even though you probably haven't heard it that often).
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Re: "Advanced" Music Theory

Postby JSynth » 02 Mar 2013 09:37

I think there is an Idiots Guide to Music Theory that's pretty good.
But I am sure there are other great books and websites that can help you out.
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